Laura Uribarri

The University of Texas at El Paso has radically grown its
master's of business administration offerings since moving classes
Downtown in 2009, meeting its goals for growth a year earlier than
planned.

In addition to its long-offered Accelerated MBA program, the
university has developed new full-time MBA and Executive MBA
formats. The first Executive MBA class graduated in July.

Leading the MBA program through that growth and its expansion
into a permanent Downtown location in the Chase Building, the first
physical expansion of the College of Business in 25 years, is Laura
Uribarri, UTEP's assistant dean for MBA Programs.

Also during that time, UTEP's MBA program received its first
national ranking in Hispanic Business Magazine in 2008, and
achieved the No. 1-ranking in 2010 and 2011.

Instead of resting on her laurels, Uribarri has her eye on the
global economy.

UTEP recently began offering its MBA students Mandarin classes
and Spanish workshops and is offering students more opportunities
to take trips overseas to learn how business is done in places like
Hong Kong and Europe.

"The key to building this community at its very core is building
human capital," Uribarri says.

With a bachelor's degree in International Relations from
Stanford University and a master's degree from the LBJ School of
Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Uribarri says
she began her career pursuits with an interest in public
policy.

Uribarri, 37, worked for the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce
in government relations before joining Mayor Joe Wardy's
administration. Then she was El Paso Electric's senior government
affairs representative in Austin for two years.

While at the chamber, she helped garment workers laid off in the
summer of 1998 make the transition into new jobs. And she worked
with El Paso Water Utilities to help convince Pentagon officials,
who were considering growing Fort Bliss, that the El Paso region
wasn't running out of water.

Uribarri sat down with El Paso Inc. and discussed how graduates
are finding jobs and getting promotions, UTEP alum Mike Loya's $10
million donation, and why she is looking beyond the border.

Q: Are UTEP's MBA programs becoming more internationally
focused?

The College of Business, in general, is very focused on global
enterprise. This is a natural phenomenon for us and it is something
we absolutely need to, and have been, embracing and capitalizing
on.

If you think about our students, the students who grow up in
this region, for most of them doing business internationally is
second nature. It is something that we as a community take for
granted. For example, there are MBA students from up North that
used to come to the maquilas as one of their international research
courses. Well, we grow up with that. This isn't an interesting
field trip for us; this is how we live and breathe and do business
on a daily basis.

Q: If the school has an edge because it's located on the
border, do employers care about that international
experience?

It does give the school an edge. As I have talked to employers
about where we are and this nascent ability of our students, they
are very much attracted to that.

The fact that the majority of our students are bilingual is a
huge asset, but it is something that we as a community often take
for granted because so many people in this community are bilingual.
But if you go to other places in this country, that is not
necessarily the case.

Q: But what about international experience beyond this
region?

So we have to ask, "OK, how do we take this nascent ability of
our students and build that up so they can go beyond this region
and, for example, do business in China?" We just started offering
Mandarin classes a couple of weeks ago, and we are excited to offer
Spanish-language workshops for our full-time MBA students.

The other piece of it is the faculty is absolutely focused on
global enterprise through their research and that percolates into
the classroom, because faculty members then have the ability to
share their research interests with the students.

Almost every semester, our students have the opportunity to do
an international engagement. Normally, it's about a nine-days
abroad. We're about to send another group abroad in January to look
at financial markets and financial institutions in the European
Union. They will be in Madrid.

Q: Where else have students gone?

We've sent students to Hong Kong; Paris; Basel, Switzerland;
Frankfurt; and this is our second trip to Madrid. We took a group
in May. That group focused on marketing strategies and visited the
headquarters of BBVA, a Spanish banking group, for example.

Now we see this enormous growth of BBVA in the Southwest of the
U.S., so it was a really interesting experience for them to see
what the company looks like in Spain and what their marketing
strategies are there, versus what they are doing here.

The next group is going to focus on finance and take a financial
course there.

Q: Given the European debt crisis, a trip to Spain seems
especially relevant. Is it any coincidence that students are going
to Spain to study?

It ought to be a very interesting time to be there - a very
relevant time. When we went in May, the youth movement had just
taken over the Plaza del Sol in Madrid. It was interesting to see
the beginnings of that and now see it move into the rest of the
U.S.

Q: How many students are enrolled in the MBA
program?

We have a total of about 400.

Q: How much growth is that?

Six years ago we were at about 250 students, so we have seen a
significant growth, about 60 percent.

Q: How many are from El Paso?

The majority of our students are from El Paso.

Q: So MBA students tend to stay in El Paso, while other
graduates have tended to leave town after getting their
degree.

Brain drain happens here, it happens in Austin, it happens in a
lot of different places. I've spent a lot of time in Austin, and I
remember when I was living there people talking about the brain
drain in Austin. Anytime you have an institution of higher learning
that is creating and producing talent at a certain volume, it is
going to outstrip the capacity of that community, which means in
order for those people to really be at their career potential they
are going to have to go somewhere else.

That said, we do see a number of our students who stay here and
become members of the business community or in the government and
non-profit sectors. But we also see a lot of students who go away
who are picked up by major companies. And if they do come back,
they bring that experience with them and it makes us richer as a
community.

Q: You've met the goals for the program's growth. What
are you focused on now?

We are focused on expanding our corporate partnerships so our
students continue to have meaningful corporate engagements and so
our corporate partners get to see who our students are.

To the extent that we can, we are trying to expand the horizons
of our students through things like these corporate partnerships
and the international research courses.

Q: Who are the corporate partners?

We are working with several Fortune 500 companies. For example,
we have had a relationship with DeWalt for several semesters. They
have been working with our students on a number of marketing
research projects. So they'll come in and will work with five or
six students on a specific project.

DeWalt has flown students out to Maryland to their headquarters
to present their project and they have just been thrilled with the
results.

We just started a similar relationship with Coca-Cola and a
couple of other companies that, because of the nature of the
project, want to remain unnamed. In some cases, they are companies
that may want to go public.

Q: Are the MBA students mostly working
professionals?

I would say about 70 percent of our students are working
professionals, or if they aren't currently working, have some sort
of work history or work experience. Some come from maquilas, some
from the military, some are entrepreneurs, some from government,
financial institutions, the non-profit sector. We have a really
good mix.

Q: What are the job prospects like for MBA grads now
given the weak economy, volatile markets, tightening regulation and
anti-bank protests such as Occupy Wall Street?

It is very competitive, and it's certainly a very tight market.
We just took a group of students to the National Society of
Hispanic MBAs conference, and you just get a sense that there are
fewer employers and more students.

It's all the more reason for students to be honing in on things
like the Mandarin classes to be able to set themselves apart.

The corporate engagements are a big part of what we are doing to
give our students an edge as well. If they have that direct contact
with these companies, the companies are more likely to say they
might want to bring a student on board because they know who they
are, they have experience with them, and the students know at least
some aspect of the company.

You're seeing government budgets contracting, non-profits in a
very difficult position, and a lot of people in those areas are
saying everything's got to be run like a business. So they're
coming into the program to learn business disciplines.

It's an interesting time to be in the MBA program because we are
seeing a huge diversity of people coming into the educational
process.

Q: As higher education becomes more expensive and many
struggle to pay off student loans, some are asking what a degree is
worth. Is the UTEP MBA worth it, and if so, who would benefit
most?

As you look at the job market, it is incredibly competitive.
Whatever you can do to set yourself apart is worth it.

If you look at comparative costs of MBAs, at UTEP we have the
ability to offer an accredited degree more inexpensively than
probably any program you can think of with AACSB accreditation
(Association to Advance Schools of Business). It's certainly the
least expensive in the state of Texas.

Although we have a very accessible MBA program from a financial
perspective, there is a lot of investment by the university into
the program itself, not only through the faculty but all the other
resources I've mentioned - the corporate engagements, the language
workshops and a number of other professional development
initiatives.

Q: As students graduate, are their degrees paying off as
they expected, getting that promotion or the position they were
looking for? And is that position or promotion happening in El
Paso?

What we see with our students, the ones who communicate with us
about the results, is that most who were working professionals when
came into the program will tend to stay with that organization.

And we have seen many examples of the outcome being they've
received a promotion. They have had an opportunity to step into a
larger role within their organization. We have lots of examples
where that has happened.

Q: Could you highlight one or two of those success
stories, specifically?

In our Executive MBA, one of our students, a chief warrant
officer in the Army, was promoted right before he graduated. He
attributed that directly to the completion of his degree.

A couple of students in the Executive MBA have started business
ventures together. They have promised that they'll have a big
announcement for us in the next couple of months.

In the Accelerated MBA, a number of graduates who worked for
banks or credit unions have seen promotions to VP positions almost
immediately following graduation.

Q: What is the cost?

Our Accelerated MBA and our full-time MBA are about $22,000 for
the program, tuition and fees. Our Executive MBA is $36,000 for
tuition, fees and books. It also includes involvement in an
international research course.

Q: How difficult is it to get accepted?

Probably six years ago it was nominally competitive. It has
become much, much more competitive in the last couple of years. I'd
say we probably have an admission rate of about 80 percent.

Q: What's the completion rate?

I'll speak mostly to the Accelerated MBA because that is the one
that has been around the longest. We're seeing about 80 percent to
85 percent completion rate, which is huge.

That is incredibly high for a program that consists primarily of
working professionals. Normally, in programs for working
professionals you see between 40 percent and 50 percent drop
off.

We've got something very special in the Accelerated MBA. It has
a structure that working professionals can handle, in terms of the
demand on their time and the rigor of the academics.

In addition, because they stay with one group of people for the
entire 24-month period, they form a support network as well.

We've had a number of incidents where somebody is just about to
quit because they feel like they just can't handle it anymore, and
their cohort just steps in and says "don't do it" and helps them
through it.

Q: UTEP alum Mike Loya recently donated $10 million
aimed at bringing together the business and engineering worlds.
What's got to change to make it happen?

There are still a lot of details being worked out, but the
initiative itself is really focused on bringing together the skills
that the engineers have with the business curriculum, so that not
only do they have the technical ability but they also have that
edge to be able to excel in the business environment.

There are those folks who are incredible technicians in the
purist sense of engineering and science, they know that world. But
they cannot speak to the finance person in that company because
their language is just different.

But if you are able to match those two skills together, that
person is invaluable within a company because they have the ability
to move between those two worlds.

Q: That seems to have worked for Loya, who graduated
from UTEP's engineering program, got an MBA from Harvard and is now
a president of one of the world's largest oil trading
companies.

Are employers interested in engineers who also understand
business?

Yeah, Mike Loya has lived it, and we see it with the employers
who come to talk with us. They're very interested in students who
have engineering or science backgrounds who have married that with
the MBA.

Going back to your question about brain drain, one of the things
we need to think about or just be focused on as a community, is
that our resources and our strengths as a community are not bound
by the jurisdiction of our city or our county.

We have friends of El Paso, ex pats of El Paso, all over the
world. We have UTEP alumni like Mike Loya all over the world, and
it is our job to do what we can to build this community.

We have alumni in major companies all over the world who are
eager to reach back and help us create opportunities for our
students.

So we've got to be thinking, in the spirit of the recent World
Series, we've got to be thinking about our bullpen - that it's much
wider than El Paso. People don't have to be in El Paso to be a part
of what we are doing here.